This invention is generally directed to the conferencing of telephone calls in a telecommunications system, and is more specifically directed to managing participation in the conference call such as controlling which participants can remain in the conference call.
Conference calls are supported in a variety of ways. A 3-way conferencing function can be performed by most modern telecommunication switches, e.g. the 5ESS® switch by Lucent Technologies Inc. Such 3-way conferencing typically provides the host, the party joining the third party to the conference call, with the ability to disconnect the last added party while retaining the connection with the other party. Conference call bridges that can support many participants are available from several manufacturers. These bridges are connected to a telecommunications switch and serve as an adjunct capable of terminating a plurality of incoming telephone calls. After dialing a predetermined telephone number to reach the conference bridge, participants typically enter a conference code associated with a specific conference. The party arranging the conference call may seek to allow only authorized participants by having an operator associated with the conference call service intercept each party attempting to join the conference call and obtain information from each caller to validate that the caller is authorized to participate in the conference call. Once a party is added to a multiparty conference call, the host is not able to positively determine if a particular party has disconnected from the conference and is not able to disconnect a particular party from the conference call while maintaining the conference call for the other parties. Of course the host can ask a particular party to voluntarily drop off the conference call, but cannot be sure that the particular party has actually dropped off of the conference call.
After discussing a subject with a group of people on a conference call, it would often be convenient to further discuss more sensitive matters relating to the subject with a subset of the participants. For example, a variety of projects may be discussed in a conference call with people involved with each of the projects and management responsible for all of the projects. Where management decisions such as discontinuing some of the projects must be made, it would be convenient to continue the conference call if the only remaining participants were limited to management and the leader of each project. However, it is not possible to ensure that only the desired subset of the original larger conference group remain on the conference call.
There exists a need for an improved conference call capability to permit a host to positively manage which participants remain on a conference call.